Banned words

[00Laura00]

I read in The Independent today that the New York Board of Education has decided to ban certain words from exam papers so as "not to offend". They include the words Evolution and Geological History as well as dinosaur, not sure how examiners are going to ensure they can cover the full sciences syllabus in the future.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/educa ... 95020.html

Complete madness
Are the NCSE aware of this and have they made their view known on this ? Not sure if the list will be withdrawn it would appear the Board are thankfully a laughing stock already.

[Dr_GS_Hurd]

It seems that the word list was genearted from testing focal groups of students using different words. Some words actually resulted in lower scores, in spite of the fact that the test questions covered the same material. The proposal is to drop the words that led to lower scores.

[Brian Jordan]

It seems that the word list was genearted from testing focal groups of students using different words. Some words actually resulted in lower scores, in spite of the fact that the test questions covered the same material. The proposal is to drop the words that led to lower scores.

It sounds as though they ought to drop the examiners, not the words.

[Brian Jordan]

They include the words Evolution and Geological History as well as dinosaur,

Looks as though the CMI lads won't be allowed to set any questions then, what with them thinking dinosaurs were on the Ark and engraved on Bishop Bell's tomb.

[a_haworthroberts]

Ken Ham talks about dinosaurs and evolution all the time.

When I first saw the article, I thought the problem was people describing right-wing Americans (or Muslim fanatics, or extreme left-wingers in Europe) as 'dinosaurs'.

[cathy]

Ken Ham talks about dinosaurs and evolution all the time.

That must account for the unpleasant emotions I feel whenever I read what he's written.

This is just wrong. You can be sensible - a few years ago a maths gcse was in trouble for using the rate at which cancer cells multiply in a question - which naturally would upset kids who'd lost family. But in that case anything multiplying could have been used and that particular example was unwise.

Common sense dictates that that same rate of multiplication would have to be used in a relevant science question and teachers are already sensitive when teaching such things and warn individual students that it might affect beforehand and check if they're ok.

Being sensitive is very different to cutting out specific important scientific terms in science exams or pretending festivals (like birthdays) which 99% of the population celebrate don't exist cos some people have issues with reality.

There is a line between sensitively addressing issus of genuine emotional upset cos of lifes circumstances (eg citizenship about world events when children have lost family in wars) and pretending that REAL things like evolution, birthdays or people with swimming pools don't exist. And its not a fine line, its an obvious one.

If kids are upset by the reality of things like dinosaurs and birthdays rather than wars and poverty it is the fault of their lunatic parents! The state should not pander to lunatic parents, cos it isn't fair on their children nor anyone elses.